I've recently started exploring the wonderful world of Japanese matcha green tea and just wondered if anyone's heard of it being made from regular loose green tea leaves? I have brewed matcha myself acquired from a local Japanese grocery and done a bit of research into how it's produced. I gather the additional health benefits which come from drinking matcha would be due to the fact that the whole leaf (minus the stem) is consumed. I'd like to drink matcha every day if I could however the cost of genuine imported matcha is fairly high, and it's shelf-life rather short.. so I wondered, could you just take gunpowder green tea for example and finely powder it using a mortar and pestle, then whisk with boiled water to create a sort of home-made matcha? I do realise this would definitely not be considered "real" matcha to be used in a ceremonial setting, but if anybody has attempted such madness I'd love to hear how it turned out and whether it was worth the extra effort.

Marlene wrote:I'm sure you cold. Don't see why not. Getting it to powder might be a little labor intensive though.

Yes and so is grinding up tea into a fine powder for some of the TeaChef recipies but we still do it anyway. Hm, I wonder what a non green tea "matcha" would be like? Golden Monkey Matcha or Pu Erh Matcha anyone? Seriously I'm going to try this when I have the time, I'll post my results here when I find the time to try it out after my finals are finished for the semester.

I just experimented a bit and it turns out that grinding up tea leaves in a mortal and pestle does in fact produce similar results to matcha. At the same time I'd suggest staying with green teas as I tried some “pu erh matcha” and it was so bad that I threw it out after a single sip and pu erh is my favorite type of tea. However, my “dragonwell matcha” turned out fairly well as the whole feel and texture was right although it was on the light side compared to the real matcha that I had before. Although I'm sure if we were to grind up some sencha tea we would actually end up, authentic tasting matcha for a fraction of the price.

I've seen powdered sencha online for considerably less cost then matcha (thought I'm sure if the amount per serving is the same). With respect to the health benefits, I'm sure it is far better then any brewed green tea since all the leaf is ingested, just like matcha. For all we know, it may have the same benefits as matcha--I doubt they've ever been researched this way.

Was just reading old post as I've just become a convert to green teas. The vita-mix works great on the grinding-in fact maybe too much so? I put the spiced green leaves in a salad I was having and they were good. Should have left them dry just a little more maybe but were really quite tasty.
I was just making jasmine and thinking that the left over leaves could be left to dry again and ground as an additive to soaps. Use it twice that way.